Christie's World Encyclopedia of Champagne & Sparkling Wine: Fourth Edition, Vol. 1

FOR TRANSPARENCY, PLEASE NOTE THERE IS NO NEED TO BUY THIS BOOK IF YOU ALREADY HAVE THE FOURTH EDITION PUBLISHED BY BLOOMSBURY ABSOLUTE. This is the most comprehensive reference available to the history, technology, producers and quality of sparkling wine, from the most famous brand of Champagne to the newest and most promising producers in the most obscure sparkling wine areas emerging around the planet. The Fourth Edition of Christie’s World Encyclopedia of Champagne & Sparkling Wine is the combined effort of the world’s two most famous sparkling wine experts: Tom Stevenson & Essi Avellan MW. This book combines Stevenson’s multiple award-winning style of breaking down the most complex technical subjects into straightforward text with Avellan’s tireless globe-trotting to update and expands her peerless reviews of producers from around the world. When brought together, the result is an easy read for beginners that is packed with more than enough technical detail and insider knowledge to satisfy the most demanding of fizz geeks. New and uniquely informative maps specially commissioned for this edition include Franciacorta, Trentodoc, two Prosecco maps (including one of the Rives), Cava and three new Champagne maps. As Tom Stevenson explains “When the publisher increased the price of this book from £50 for the Third Edition to £200 for the Fourth Edition … well, let’s just say that neither Essi nor I were impressed or pleased. Since many of our regular readers either could not afford £200 or even when they could, objected, understandably, to paying quadruple the usual price, we were determined to make it more widely available at a more affordable price. Authors own their own copyright, of course, but not the physical presentation of those words as originated by the publisher. Acquiring those design rights is almost unheard of, but suffice to say that the circumstances were such that we acquired those rights. To conform to Amazon KDP’s print-on-demand restrictions, we had to split the hardback into two volumes, and slightly reduce the trim size of the paperback to encompass all 800 pages. All KDP books are individually printed to order, thus can never be cheap, yet we are still able to offer these formats at a significantly lower price than Bloomsbury Absolute demanded for the book when it was printed in bulk in Asia, which Essi and I find immensely satisfying.” When the First Edition of Christie’s World Encyclopedia of Champagne & Sparkling Wine was published by Absolute Press in 1998, it included the first ever publication of a 17th century document proving the English invented sparkling Champagne six years before Dom Pérignon set foot in Hautvillers. This scoop of three hundred years in the making ensured the encyclopedia itself would make history by becoming the only wine book to warrant a leader in any UK national newspaper (The Guardian, 14 October 1998) and the book sold 250,000 copies before it rolled off the printing press! The French reaction ranged from outrage in Le Figaro, which accused Stevenson of trying to burn Dom Pérignon (“Les Anglais veulent brûler Dom Pérignon”, 13 October 1998) to admiration from the Salon International du Livre Gourmand in Périgueux, which recognised the weight of evidence uncovered, awarding the encyclopedia “Best Wine Book of the Year” within hours of publication. From the First Edition, which consisted of 320 pages, to the Fourth Edition of 800 pages, this encyclopedia has always provided a country-by-country guide, from the finest and most famous Champagnes of France to the lesser-known producers of emerging sparkling wine regions spread across five continents of the world. The roles of Stevenson and Avellan as judges at the Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships since 2014 have alone given them more global sparkling wine insight and experience than anyone else on earth.